Samar Samry

Tucson, Arizona USA

Artist Bio
I was born in Saudi Arabia in a social situation that did not encourage art. Knitting class passed for art instruction in grade school. We moved to the United States when I was a teenager, but I still had little exposure to the arts. After high school, I felt a sudden obsession to photograph the world around me. I previously spent my life looking at the ground, avoiding the eyes of authority figures.

Suddenly, I needed to lift my head and look at life head on. My upbringing sensitized me to hypocrisy and the pressure silence can exert. In my first biology course, the inner organs, hormones, and arterial and neural pathways were brought out of the dark and explicated. But that level of clarity is impossible in daily life. Shame, uncertainty, modesty, avoidance, pride, and the lust for convenience hide reality. A documentary artistillustrates, with exactitude, illusion and fact. Lens-based art documents metaphors.